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With the BlueFin Tuna, it is very difficult to say. In Japan, they are mostly fished out. In Europe, they are mostly fished out. In the US, they originally thought that the BFT crossed the Atlantic and went over to Europe, where they get decimated. They just assumed this happened. After tagging and tracking numerous BFT, the researchers discovered that they stay between the Gulf of Mexico and up north and do not really cross over to Europe. In the US, BFT fishing is highly regulated. Commercial guys have different regs than the sportfishermen. Sportfishermen can keep 1 per boat in certain length restriction and must report their catch to NOAA. Once the allotted quota is filled, the BFT season for sportfishermen is shut down. There is a Northern and a Southern zone and these have different quota's and stuff. People will still go and do catch and release, too; they just can't keep them. One of my customers landed a 75"+ BFT a week after the Northern Trophy quota was met and had to release it after reviving it (hold on to it with a gaff thru the lower mouth plate and let it swim to recover). 73" is the trophy category, and IIRC, they cut off the keepers between 27" and 58" when I last looked a few years ago, so you could keep 1 fish between 27" and 58" CFL and that was it per boat if the trophy season was closed.

In Europe and Africa in the Med Sea, they use huge nets and stuff and decimate the BFT populations like crazy. They do not pay attention to the regulations and have grossly decimated their stocks. The countries pushed for CITES to ban fishing, yet many of the countries that pushed for this were the ones that refused to regulate the fishery themselves and constantly turned a blind eye to the Commercial guys and those fishing illegally and let them decimate the population. Same in Japan, WAY overfished and they buy up the vast majority of the US Commercially caught BFT and the prices are stupidly high.

In the US, the Highly Migratory Species (tuna, swordfish, etc) are highly regulated. But the Commercial guys have different rules to play under than the sportfishermen. It's quite ignorant to think that the Sportfishermen put a dent in these species, but they have the strictest regulations to follow and the Commercial guys can get away with more. Look at the Striped Bass issue. Draggers can drag areas for a fish and net staggering amounts of other species in the nets. They get thrown overboard and generally die, leaving behind paths of thousands of dead fish. This is allowed for some reason by the US Gov't, yet they scream at the recreational guys who catch one or two fish. When the Commercial guys get caught, they may get a small fine, but the Gov't goes after the recreational guys more. In CT, we can watch the draggers drag the Long Island Sound and throw their non target species back. They throw dead fish back constantly, and are allowed to do so and the rec guys get more stringent regs. In New Jersey, they allowed Russian Comm Boats into their area for Squid, which is what Tuna and other species highly feed upon. They had an agreement, but NEVER checked to see if Russia was following the quota's/rules/etc. The squid population in that area has been decimated for years afterwards, and the tuna are becoming more scarce. The squid are starting to rebound, as well as the tuna, but it's very slow.

So in short, it's the commercial guys who generally put a huge hurting on the fish species and that they all effect each other. The recreational guys pay the price with more license fee's, harsher regulations and punishments. If you want the fish to come back, stop commercially fishing for them or at least stop the drag nets that kill hundreds of thousands of fish needlessly. The recreational guys hardly have the numbers and resources to put a huge dent in the populations and don't drag areas and kill hundreds of thousand small fish, other species, etc like the draggers do. They can wipe out whole areas of fish in a day or two and everything in the nets usually ends up dying and then the dead fish are thrown back into the water and the species that they were targeting is brought to the market at the cost of all of the other dead fish.

Bikeman

Post subject: Re: >> I must admit... <<

Posted: Wed Mar 26, 2014 10:10 am

Joined: Thu Jun 13, 2013 6:25 amPosts: 585

Well said Tim!

Melampus

Post subject: Re: >> I must admit... <<

Posted: Thu Apr 03, 2014 5:33 pm

Forum Moderator

Joined: Wed May 16, 2012 10:42 amPosts: 3915Location: USA... mostly.

DAN <> My buddy on the big sportfisherman is the Captain. So yes, he's only fishing for sport, but yes, he does it for a living... albeit as a Captain on a privately owned Sportfisherman. He works commercially, but he's not a commercial fisherman per se'. As my text reads, he was calling me to fetch said coin. W/o a commercial license, you can not sell your fish to wholesale markets, but small restaurants & Chefs such as myself typically buy fisherman out like himself @discount to what we'd pay from a wholesale market all w/in 24 hours of harvest.

My buddy on the other boat is just a sport fisherman out on vacation on the OBX. I met him fishing the GOM last summer, and we're hoping to make it out again in a few months when I get some breathing room.

UMBERTO <> Don't read too far into it. I am not upset that I have a job; I am extremely blessed to do what I do where I do for whom I do... I am extremely clear in that. But I am just as clear, that I'm fueled existentially by a hatred that runs as deep as the veins to the hell I am destined to. I was an angry young man. I am an angry man. There are those that believe peace & love are the way to enlightenment... and to them I can not speak.. as they anger me out of control. I have known no stronger emotion, I have experienced no more powerful a motivator, I have had no more guiding a light than the beacon of hatred I have navigated a lifetime upon. It has delivered me to where I stand, and for better or for worse she is always there. It's always been comforting to me, to know w/o a doubt that in the blink-of-an-eye, I can draw upon the vast abyss of hatred that resides palpably behind the face I'm forced to wear for society. I harvest for fuel... the densest fuel I've ever known. Therein lies the frustration I mention in my opening post. It is only myself I am pissed at... the paradigm of which I have resigned to. I know a paradox lies embedded within, but in all of my successes, in all of my triumphs, in all of the instances in which my way has worked... and worked well.. I still have to ponder why I'm just another indentured servant on the plantation.

I sincerely appreciate the romanticism of, "just up & leave"; I held those stances in my youth. But in the real world, that is how careers are ended, reputations are destroyed, bridges are burned... I'm not so naive as to claim there is not a time or place for such drastic measure, but coming from someone WHO HAS lived on the street, sleeping under overpasses, showering at beach stalls, I find that working and working HARD to pay the mortgage and cover the bills to provide for my dog is a far preferable existence than the aforementioned.

I ask you to step back a moment & factor for a moment the level of exhaustion that some like myself entertain. I have a 30 month running mean of 80.2 hours per week. I bill on the 15th & 30/31st, and have a high billing statement of 234 hours for 16 days; that's consecutive 117 hour work weeks. Unfortunately, I have done more 35-40 hour shifts (AT LEAST 6 a year, but realistically double) in the last 30 months than most will do in a lifetime. Living only to work, at an extreme end of the spectrum as few of us do, leaves the body in a constant state of sympathetic nervous response. Prematurely expending the adrenal system, neutransmissions interrupted - synapses unable to fire efficiently... it is the course of an early death.. it is my path. There is my "pissed". Not at all that I am going to die young - I've already died once, but rather, that even with above an average intellect, with an above average skill set, with a work ethic that surpasses a sweatshop laborer working for the permission to breathe, with above average vision & perception... I am still on the plantation.

My point was that although I'm apparently lucid & coherent, my thoughts are often abstract & discombobulated. There are shrinks out there in cyberspace who are reading this right now, chuckling under their breath at how textbook my case study is, and I am not so foolish nor naive as to not see but too busy and too frugal to engage the psychotherapy.

I am always pissed, but my work... my product.. that is deliverance.

All work & no play... make Jack a dull boy.

_________________Embracing the silence amid a life and land full of static...

Lepus

Post subject: Re: >> I must admit... <<

Posted: Thu Apr 03, 2014 8:21 pm

Joined: Sat Mar 01, 2014 1:15 amPosts: 2996Location: Raleigh, NC

Phew. Reading this was illuminating. I've worked with chefs who have had similar zeal and mania, but I've never been witness to so succinct an expression. It's enthralling, invigorating, and when directed at you pretty terrifying.

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